School Management

Emergency Planning and Business Continuity

Cyber security

Cyber-attacks and data breaches have proven to be two of the greatest concerns for business continuity professionals for several years running.

Cyber security's core function is to protect the devices we all use (smartphones, laptops, tablets and computers), and the services we access - both online and at work - from theft or damage. It's also about preventing unauthorised access to the vast amounts of personal information we store on these devices, and online.

The National Cyber Security Centre NCSC), which is part of GCHQ has produced guides to help your business to improve cyber security within your organisation - quickly, easily and at low cost.

Business Continuity Awareness Week

Business Continuity Awareness Week (BCAW) is held in May each year, and is run by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) to raise awareness of the benefits of forward planning to protect businesses and their staff.

It is a National and International week promoting Business Continuity and this year has some good information and webinars on managing COVID-19 impacts and recovery from COVID-19 so is particularly relevant.

Business Continuity Planning

Any incident whether it is large or small, accidental or deliberate, can cause major disruption to your business. However, by planning in advance you will be able to resume your day to day business sooner.

This is where business continuity planning (BCP) comes in. Its purpose is to help you to prepare strategies to cope with disruptions so that you can continue to deliver your business' critical activities and reduce potential harm to staff.

By understanding the risks facing the everyday running of your business or organisation, you are better able to foresee problems and guard against them developing into serious disruptions.

Why have a business continuity plan?

It is important to plan for unforeseen circumstances. For example, what would you do if your workplace catches fire?

Some hard decisions will have to be made, and made quickly. For instance:

• What do you do with all your staff?

• How do you tell the community/customer that you cannot provide 'business/service as usual'?

• How do you meet important deadlines?

The list of questions grows, and so do the levels of uncertainty and anxiety. Without a BCP you will have to rely on an ad-hoc approach to deal with these issues.

Would your business stay afloat? A guide to preparing your business for flooding

Make sure your business is prepared for flooding, one of the most common and widespread natural disasters in the UK. The Environment Agency have prepared a simple guide on some of the easy actions that you can take to make sure that your business is as well as possible. Have a look at the business checklist on page 16 of this document to see if your business is prepared for flooding.

Hoax email information - National Cyber Crime Agency advice 08.05.18

Lockdown Procedures for Schools

Please review the below document, based on information developed and supplied by the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTO). This template document is provided in MSWord format, so you can download and tailor the content to suit your school environment: